2007 Soap Box Archives

Airplanes

My preferred mode of travel is on my bus. I'm very much at home on it and I have the convenience of not having to pack bags and I'm able to go to sleep in one town and wake up in another, while covering several hundred miles in the process.

However, once in a while we just can't keep the schedule without flying.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not afraid to fly or anything like that but it seems that just about every time I go to catch an airplane something happens to delay the flight either getting in or going out or they just may cancel the flight all together.

I try to only bring carry-on luggage with me that fits under my seat as I don't like having to compete for overhead space with some burnt out business man who comes down the aisle looking like a pack mule with bags hanging off all sides of him.

I don't even try to fly my hat with me anymore as I have had some bad experiences such as a guy taking my hat down out of the overhead and telling the stewardess to put it someplace else so he could put his bag up there.

And the stewardess did. I tried to explain to the man and stewardess that the hat was the only piece of luggage I had in the overhead and that I figured that it had as much business up there as his carry on did.

All to no avail. I don't know where she put it, but my hat looked like it had been thrown into a herd of stampeding elephants at the end of the trip. Well not quite, but you know.

One lesson learned and many more to go.

Have you ever noticed that when something is wrong with a plane the airline never tells you until your ticket has been processed and you're sitting on the plane?

Then the captain comes on and says something to the effect of, "Ladies and gentlemen if you happen to be on the left side of the airplane you may notice that the wing has fallen off and we have mechanics dealing with it and right now it looks like we'll be ready to go in oh, about twelve hours or so, I'm going to turn the seat belt sign off so you can move around the cabin. If we get any updates on the situation we'll let you know. Thank you for your patience."

Patience??? What does he mean patience? Why didn't he tell me the plane had a problem before I got on here and I could have rented a car and driven to Omaha.

Then when the plane does get off the ground and lands at the next airport how many times have you heard something like this?

"Ladies and gentlemen as you can see we've landed and are taxiing into the airport but there's another plane sitting at our gate and we're going to have to hold here until they get it towed away. Right now the ground crew
tells us that the tow machine is currently not working so we're going to have to wait until another one can be flown in from Boston, I'll keep you updated on the situation."

And then when you finally get a gate, you begin the waiting game of wondering whether your luggage made it or not and you stand at the carrousel nervously watching every piece that drops on the belt and when they finally
arrive, if they arrive, you pick them up and walk out to face the traffic.

The white zone is for the loading and unloading of passengers only. Remember that one?

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

October 1, 2007